As part of the competition Ms Mether said all artists had to draw a religious subject and adhere to a series of stringent rules.

"Many of these artists don't come from a religious background ... but there are the traditions," she said. "You've got to work with chalk, you can't use water, you can't be painting pictures because it's all got to be very original techniques. So yeah, it's very different."

Ms Mether said the trip was also a networking opportunity.

"I was meeting other people to explore opportunities for Australian artists and to hopefully bring some international artists over here and increase our knowledge base," she said.

"We went over to explore the origins of street painting and take over Australia's champion pavement artist, Jenny McCracken to compete at this international competition and it was just phenomenal. It's a tiny town and over 150,000 people would have come through to see all of these artists producing masterpieces on the ground.

Ms McCracken was given 24 hours to produce her work. Ms Mether said part of the attraction of street art is that it fades away.

"It's taking art to the people. It's an ephemeral form of art. It's not permanent form of art and for a lot of artists that gives them great freedom," she said.